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’t seem to be having much of a direct impact in how consumers decide to buy things.In a new study from Forrester Research, analyst Sucharita Mulpuru presents some surprising—and what would seem to be contradictory—data:Forty-eight percent of consumers reported that social media posts are a great way to discover new products, brands, trends, or retailers, but less than 1% of transactions could be traced back to trackable social links.(MORE: 10 Things You Should Be Buying Used)These factoids come from consumer surveys, as well as the tracing of 77,000 online purchases made by American consumers over a two-week span in April. What researchers found is that consumers almost never buy something right after seeing it mentioned in a post by a friend or retailer on Facebook or other social media outlets.Instead, consumers who are making a first-time buy with an e-retailer were far more likely to originate their purchase via a direct visit to the site (20%), or an organic or paid search (16% and 11%, respectively). For repeat shoppers, 30% of online purchases begin with an e-mail from the retailer. (No wonder retailers flood customers with e-mails.) Another 30% of repeat customer searches start with a direct visit to the retailer’s site.“We’ve known for awhile that Facebook hasn’t been a direct sales channel for most companies and it never will be,[url=http://www.supratksocietyvip.com/]supra skytop[/url],” says Mulpuru, the study’s author,[url=http://www.supratksocietyvip.com/]supra tk society[/url], via InternetRetailer.com “Hopefully we can put that conversation to rest now.”(MORE: Your E-mail In-box Is About to Be Swamped. Happy Holidays!)Nonetheless,http://www.supratksocietyvip.com/, Mulpuru says that exposure on social media sites can “amplify a brand or a product.” It’s possible that repeatedly seeing a product highlighted on Facebook could slowly sway a consumer into making a purchase. This sort of influence is difficult to measure. It’s almost subliminal. But there’s influence there, no doubt about it.Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.Study: Pop Songs Literally Get Stuck in Teens’ HeadsPM Images / Getty ImagesEmailPrintShareFacebookTwitterTumblrLinkedInStumbleUponRedditDiggMixxDeliciousGoogle+Comment Follow @timenewsfeedEver wonder why some songs are more popular than others?Director of Emory University’s Center for Neuropolicy Gregory Berns and economics research specialist Sara Moore have discovered there’s some science behind that phenomenon.Their federally-funded study, published in the June 8th issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, found that the strength of brain activity in teens could predict which songs would sell 20,000 copies by Nielsen standards. Likewise, the lab found that 90% of songs that received a weak neural response sold fewer than 20,000 copies.(VIDEO: Top 10 Songs of 2010)Berns and Moore found this correlation by having a focus group of 27 teens ages 12-17 — who make up 20% of music consumers — listen to 120 obscure tunes from unsigned artists on MySpace, while functional magnetic resolution imaging (fMRI) tracked their neural responses. Listeners also rated each song on a scale of 1-5, but how much teens liked certain songs did not jibe with future song sales.In fact, the original purpose of this project was to study how peer pressure influences teens’ opinions. But three years later, when Berns heard American Idol contestant Kris Allen belt out “Apologize” by OneRepublic — a song used in the study — he started to wonder whether his focus group could have predicted that song’s success. So he compared the earlier neural data to sales figures of the songs from 2007 to 2010, and found that the neural data did seem to forecast how popular they would become.(LIST: The Best and Worst of the Grammys)This pop music experiment is just the beginning in Berns’ broader quest to better understand how cultural trends emerge.“I want to know where ideas come from, and why some of them